The Encyclopedia of Islam, Volumes I-IV (Revised Edition)

Edited collection, E.J. Brill (publisher) Leiden, Netherlands, 1978 4963 pp. $569.00

Reviewed by E.F. Henderson

Those of us who are involved in the relationship between the Arabs on one side and the Americans or Europeans on the other are well aware that a main cause of misunderstanding is a failure by each side to appreciate the religious and cultural views of the other. This failure on the Western side has been demonstrated by a long history of ill-directed scholarship in English-language books on the subject of Islam.

More recently, scholarly works in English by non-Muslims have been appearing which are a great improvement on the past, and a few major works have been written in English by accepted Muslim authorities which carry the stamp of authenticity. But there is still no authentic and reliable dictionary or encyclopedia of Islam. The revised edition of "The Encyclopedia of Islam" which has been coming out in fascicules for 30 years and is still unfinished, does not fill the void.

The Muslim Perspective

When dealing with doctrinal or theological questions, this work is marred by a problem that has plagued most previous works of western scholarship on Islam. Muslims view the Quran as the word of God, timeless, uncreated, and revealed to the Prophet Mohammad, who was human and not divine. The Prophet recited it and his followers remembered it, and in due course wrote it down. Today, although there was a very early history of versions with some variations, orthodox Islam accepts the one and only version as accurate and beyond any question. Muslims therefore reject the approach of Western scholars, whose theories as to sources or authenticity or circumstances of specific passages all imply that they are the work of man. It should be possible to describe Islam without using the arguments of those who reject its fundamental premise. If non-Muslim scholars cannot do this, what is wrong with employing Muslim experts?

The authors chosen for this encyclopedia are mainly from U.S., European and Israeli universities. Many are respected scholars. In theory, the religion and background of the authors should not matter. In practice, it seems to matter. The contributing authors who seem to be Muslims, from their names or positions, mostly write on marginal subjects. The main articles on doctrine are still, as in earlier editions, written by non-Muslims.

In addition to being erratically edited, poorly transliterated, and inadequately referenced the work tries to do too much. As well as being a work on Islam, it seeks to be a gazeteer of Arabia and of the Islamic world, and succeeds in being neither. Thus it contains a great amount of irrelevant or very marginally relevant material, including separate articles on various sandy wastes in Saudi Arabia.

Birds and Snakes

Among other examples of irrelevancies are:

A. "Abu Barakash." The writer starts this article encouragingly: "A name no longer in use" given "in confusion" by children in the Hijaz to denote the Chaffinch which in fact "is the Ploceid"—and so on for 1,200 words and a 16-line bibliography about a bird, which is apparently unconnected with Islam.

B. "Hayya," snake. Eight hundred words. It tells us: "If no food ... will live on air ... eyes like nails which, if torn out, will grow again ... regains sight by rubbing eyes on Fennel." (Elsewhere an article on "Fennel," under the Arabic heading, amazingly says the same). "Attracted by fire but flees at the sight of a naked man." There is a great deal more like this. It is all told dead-pan with the serious and ridiculous put side by side. This contributor's source seems to be a learned seer of the 13th century who collected scientific material as well as old wives' tales; but he does not differentiate between them and the reader is left to assume that these myths are Islamic beliefs. Would an Encyclopedia of Christianity list old wives' tales about animals from the Middle Ages as examples of Christian belief?

C. "Badw." This 23,000-word article is surely one of the funniest. The author is clearly obsessed by reindeer and Siberia, of which he gives us a large folding map (there is one of Arabia too). "Cattle", he tells us, "are not suited to semi-desert grazing. They also find difficulty in grazing in winter in a steppe with frozen snow cover as in Siberia (cf Potapov and Hancar 390)". And before you go to look up those two important references, you should have a taste of the authors remarkable English. He writes: "I think it is the quality of the largely hypothetical sequence of creative centers, which step by step gain and enlarge the domination by man of other organizations, that it corresponds excellently with the succession of cultures presented by several ethnologists, e.g., by Dittmer. It also has the advantage of making parallel invention unnecessary. (Sauer)." Quite so! This author contributes several articles, and it is hard to see why.

Surely, the kind of reference work needed by the student of Islam has yet to be written.

E.F. Henderson is Chairman of the American Educational Trust, and former British Ambassador to Qatar.